Kategorie: #XRB

Bitgrail has denied responsibility for the recent hack that saw the theft of 17 million XRB, or Nano, in comments made in a Telegram group for victims of the hack. Despite rejecting responsibility for the incident, the exchange states that it will “voluntarily” refund users through the creation and issuance of BGS tokens.

Bitgrail Operator Denies Responsibility for Hack

A document prepared by the operator of Bitgrail, Francesco “The Bomber” Firano, has been the subject of widespread reporting, following its dissemination to members of a Telegram group comprised of victims of Bitgrail’s hack.

A translated summary of the document has been made available by the Telegram group, as Mr. Firano apparently “did not want […] the whole doc[ument]” shared. The release of the translated document was approved by Mr. Firano.

The summary states that Bitgrail “plans [to] reopen soon,” adding that the date on which it will re-launch “will be announced soon.” The document also asserts that Bitgrail “still sees themselves as not responsible for the theft and therefore they believe they have no obligation to refund stolen coins”.

Bitgrail to Refund Users with BGS Tokens

Bitgrail states that “on reopen […] all non-nano funds will be available and withdrawable, nano balance will be set to 20% of what it was before.” In order to repay the remaining 80% of nano balances, Bitgrail states that it will “voluntarily” introduce a new token called BGS (Bitgrail Shares), which will be distributed to victims of the hack. Bitgrail claims that it will then purchase back the BGS tokens at a rate of “$10.50 USD” per token, with purchases set to take place at the end of each month. The summary states that Bitgrail will use half of its monthly profits to conduct the purchases.

Participation in the company’s “voluntar[y]” refund comes with a stipulation, however, as customers of the “platform after reopen will [be] requir[ed] to sign a “waiver of all rights for legal action.”

Exit Scam Speculation Continues

Bitgrail has been subject to accusations that the hack it experienced may have comprised an inside job. The tiny Italian cryptocurrency exchange apparently existed for the primary purpose of facilitating the trading of Nano, formerly Railbocks, which languished in relative obscurity before making gains of 17,500% at the end of 2017.

Critics of Bitgrail have pointed to persistent difficulties reported by users of the small exchange in attempting to withdraw funds during the period leading up to the hack, with many suggesting that Bitgrail’s hack may have been a cover for an exit scam.

The Nano team have sought to distance themselves from Bitgrail and Mr. Firano, last month stating “We now have sufficient reason to believe that Firano has been misleading the Nano Core Team and the community regarding the solvency of the BitGrail exchange for a significant period of time.”

What is your response to Bitgrail’s proposed creation and issuance of BGS tokens? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Nano is the only coin in the top 30 by market cap to have gained significantly on a day when most cryptocurrencies have fallen by high single-digits. At the time of writing, Nano (XRB) is up almost 20 percent to the US dollar and almost 25 percent against Bitcoin. At the time of writing, Nano … Continued

Questions continue to mount over $170 million worth of Nano (XRB) tokens that have gone missing from little-known cryptocurrency exchange BitGrail. As reported by CCN sister site Hacked, there is growing suspicion among Nano (formerly Raiblocks) community members that BitGrail, which is based out of Florence, Italy, was insolvent long before the alleged hack and … Continued

Cryptocurrency can be lost in a variety of ways, from hacking to forgotten passwords and failed flash drives. But in dollar terms, one of the biggest causes of crypto losses is bad code, and it’s not usually the fault of the coin’s developers. Instead, third parties, including shoddy smart contract developers and shady exchanges, are to blame for losses that have reached half a billion dollars in the last seven months.

Bitgrail Gets Railed for Dodgy Code

Last week, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the demise of Bitgrail, which contrived to lose $170 million of nano cryptocurrency. While the precise sequence of events that caused the catastrophic collapse of the exchange with the assets of thousands of customers is still being confirmed, poor code is being blamed. As reported at the time:

There are rumors that Bitgrail became insolvent following a withdrawal bug that was discovered by some users and then shared in Discord and other chat groups, causing the wallet balance to gradually diminish. One user explained: “There was a bug on Bitgrail where if you placed two orders you got double balance added to your account. You could then withdraw while the orders were up and steal the coins. You had negative balance in the end but you could just make a new account.”

In the aftermath of the incident, this theory has been bolstered by allegations that a bug was indeed responsible, and not in nano’s code, but in Bitgrail’s. One source asserted: “There was a bug, on the withdraw page. But this check was only on java-script client side, you find the js which is sending the request, then you inspect element – console, and run the java-script manually, to send a request for withdrawal of a higher amount than in your balance. Bitgrail delivered this withdrawal. How many people did this? Who knows.”

There was another bug, you could request a withdrawal to your address – from another user-id, from another user-account. That would cause the other users balance to have “missing funds” or “negative balance”. Bitgrail bomber solved this bug by manually entering the “correct” numbers in his database. This is what you get for using a PHP website coded by same skill-level as CfB of IDIOTA.

Even the Best Cryptocurrencies Aren’t Immune to Poor Code

The cryptocurrency most commonly associated with catastrophic bugs is ethereum. That’s not due to its underlying code, but on account of the smart contracts that can be built on top of the ethereum framework. First there was the DAO, which led to ethereum being forked right out the gate, and then there was the Parity bug that caused 150,000 ETH to be stolen, followed by the other Parity bug that caused $168 million of ETH to be locked up.

In the past couple of weeks, ethereum bugs have surfaced once more, albeit on a smaller scale. Proof of Weak Hands (PoWH) was a joke scamcoin which turned into an actual scamcoin after a bug led to the loss of 900 ether worth $1 million that had been sent to the contract address. The developer then disappeared after receiving death threats from investors aggrieved to discover that the joke Ponzi they were buying into was even less legitimate than it had seemed.

After a smart contract bug led to the loss of 900 ETH, the PoWH website looked like this in the days afterwards

PoWH has since spawned a new scamcoin called ethpyramid which is for “strong hands only”. To the question “Is Ethpyramid secure?” the site responds “Yes. Our dev team put a lot of time into refining and testing this contract to make sure your tokens are safe. Internal functions of the contract are not accessible to the end user.” There’s also PoWH420, “the world’s dank autonomous and self-sustaining 420 pyramid scheme”.

PoWH 420

Even if joke coins and their joke developers are taken out of the equation, it’s evident that cryptocurrencies are only as strong as their weakest link. While altcoins such as ethereum and nano have undoubted potential, like every other crypto they’re hostage to bugs lurking in wallets, smart contracts, and exchanges. One bad line of code is all it takes.

Do you think Bitgrail was brought down by a withdrawal bug or is there more to this story? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and PoWH420. Katie Webster assisted with this article.

It was announced yesterday that BitGrail, the Italian cryptocurrency exchange, lost 17 million of the cryptocurrency NANO (XRB). To date, the hack is worth over $170 million USD.

A week ago, RaiBlocks rebranded to Nano and jumped in price nearly 40% in 24 just hours.The rebranding was highly anticipated by most in the project’s community but not all were certain it would be the best move. Non-the-less, it seemed to have been a positive move until now.

Nano provides fast, easy and free transactions on its blockchain. These transactions can be done on an ...

BitGrail was the fifth most popular exchange for XRB trading according to Coinmarketcap, however the volume has now been amended to zero. With a market valuation today of $10 per XRB, the to, al loss is estimated to be $170m. The Nano Core team were informed by the owner of BitGrail, Francesco “The Bomber” Firano … Continued

The instant transactions, zero fees, infinitely scalable altcoin RaiBlocks (XRB) announced today that it would be rebranding itself. Nano will be its new identity. That means no more uncertainty over the pronunciation of the name – Ray? Rye? – because now the name is sleek and simple. The question now becomes, what does a rebrand mean for Nano?

So far, it’s purely good news. Currently, XRB is selling for $19.81. The coin has gone up 37.77% in the last 24 hours, ...